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CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS 67


cent; this result may be because of diverse diets, such as in Uganda [Benson 2008]), whereas in other cases only one food item was reported, but this item constituted 50–60 percent of dietary energy (for example, rice in Asia). Also, some countries did not report data for all of 2008, although we ensured that at least nine months of data were available, or we used the rise in prices over the first half of 2008 to proxy to garner an estimate. Countries with these caveats attached to them are listed in the notes to Figure 3.4. The figure groups countries by their level of real price change. Figure 3.4 demonstrates some basic spatial patterns. Most Asian countries for which we have data witnessed moderate price changes, although Vietnam and Thailand—two large rice exporters—witnessed big price changes in rice. India and Bangladesh actually witnessed lower prices in 2008, partly because prices in 2007 were quite high. Price changes were significant in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and very high in Sri Lanka. In Latin America, price changes were modest and sometimes even negative in South America, but several Central American countries experienced large changes in food prices, consistent with


Figure 3.4 Some cautious estimates of price changes in staple foods during 2008


Average change in prices


No data Negative (0%) No change (0–5%) Moderate change (5–15%) Large change (15–30%) Very large change (30%)


Source: Calculations by the authors using data from GIEWS (2009). Notes:


Prices are in real local currency units, except in a few cases (see Appendix Table A.3). The price series is an estimate of retail prices for unprocessed staple foods. Countries with limited data include Cameroon, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia. In these cases, either monthly data for 2008 were incomplete or the commodities in question made up less than 30 percent of dietary energy share.


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